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Sudan: South Sudan Border Residents Prepare for Raids By Nomads
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The Nation (Nairobi)
27 March 2008
Posted to the web 26 March 2008
Badru Mulumba
Juba
Sultan Dhieu Mathok Ding repeatedly thrusts his left fist in the air and together with the more than 100 representatives of the Aweil, a Dinka community living along the north-south Sudan border, chants enthusiastically, "United we stand, united we stand, united we stand."
Theirs is not a call for a unified Sudan after the referendum in 2011, but a call for unity to counter attacks by the Misseriya, Arab nomads they suspect want to annex parts of their lands in the north.
And this Saturday in early March, the Aweil are meeting in this low-roofed, dark conference hall with heavy drapes and fitted with leather cinema chairs to chart out their next course of action.
The Aweil are very angry because, as the North and South tussle over the yet-to-be-drawn borders, they remain pawns in the game, drawn into a war they can do without.
"There have been about six attacks on our land. They have killed our people and taken our children," Mr Ding says after the day-long meeting. "Tension is still very, very high on the ground."
A Dinka committee
They have converged to form a Dinka committee, not to plan for war, but to talk to the Misseriya, although they do not rule out self-defence. The Dinka committee comprises 17 members.
Other communities that live along the north-south border such as the Ngok Dinka from the oil-rich Abyei area, Twic Dinka, and Nuer have sent observers to the meeting.
Estimates by the committee put the number of people abducted by the Misseriya at 50,000 of whom only about 3,000 have been released.
The latest clashes occurred in early March in the Grinty and Rumakier areas of northern Bahr el-Gazal, one of southern Sudan's 10 states. The nomads blocked trade routes to the south, and 120 people, including 97 nomads and 21 soldiers, were injured in the clashes.
According to a source at the scene of the fighting, the full extent of that battle has been under-reported, but it was the closest the Sudan People's Liberation Army came to giving the horse-riding Arab militias a bloody nose, pushing them back more than 40 kilometres.
The fighting was so heavy that the International Committee of the Red Cross flew in two plane-loads of medicine and medical equipment to the southern army and the northern Arab nomads.
The Saturday meeting in Juba was held with all this in mind, and was meant to plan for a joint Misseriya-Dinka meeting in Khartoum two days later in the latest attempt at resolving the conflict under the aegis of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the National Congress Party.
The two parties have assigned SPLM's Cabinet Affairs Minister, Pagan Amum, and the National Congress Party's Humanitarian Affairs Minister, Mohammed Haroun, to push the political effort to resolve the crisis. It's the two who have called the Dinka-Misseriya meeting.
"Since we are neighbours, we believe we should co-exist peacefully," Ding said. "We have no problem with allowing the Misseriya to graze their cattle on our land, provided they do not come with guns."
Running parallel to the political attempts to solve the crisis is a military effort.
After the latest heavy attack, a military team comprising north's Sudan Armed Forces and the south's Sudan People's Liberation Army was dispatched to Juba en route to the scene of fighting.
"We want to get to the bottom of this," Maj Gen Peter Parnyang said in an interview in mid March.
The military committee is drawn from the Joint Defence Board that comprises equal numbers of troops from the north and South.
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That the Dinka have seen it fit to form a committee to take up the Misseriya issue directly says volumes about their view of the two armies' military efforts to resolve the crisis.
In fact, just a week after the military team visited the area, the Misseriya attacked again, this time targeting the oil-rich region of Unity State. The attacks have assumed a certain pattern. Every time an attack occurs the military committee meets, then goes to the area, after which there is another attack.
In early January, fighting erupted hours after a combined north-south team, including Abdul-Rahim Mohammed Hussein (north Sudan Defence Minister, NCP), Pagan Amum (Sudan Cabinet Affairs Minister) and Dominic Dim (South Sudan Defence Minister) left Aweil, the capital of Northern Bahr el-Gazal.
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